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One day, passing by the familiar apple-tree, more from habit than anything I cast a furtive glance in the direction of the little spot I knew so well, and it suddenly struck me that there was a change in the surface of the soil that concealed our treasure … as though there were a little protuberance where there had been a hollow, and the bits of rubbish were disarranged. “What does that mean?” I wondered. “Can someone have guessed our secret and dug up the watch?”

I had to make certain with my own eyes. I felt, of course, the most complete indifference in regard to the watch that lay rusting in the bosom of the earth; but was not prepared to let anyone else make use of it! And so next day I got up before dawn again and arming myself with a knife went into the orchard, sought out the marked spot under the apple-tree, began digging–and after digging a hole a yard deep was forced to the conviction that the watch was gone, that someone had got hold of it, taken it away, stolen it!

But who could have dug it up except David?

Who else knew where it was?

I filled in the hole and went back to the house. I felt deeply injured.

“Supposing,” I thought, “that David needs the watch to save his future wife or her father from dying of starvation…. Say what you like, the watch was worth something…. Why did he not come to me and say: ‘Brother’ (in David’s place I should have certainly begun by saying brother), ‘brother, I need money; you have none, I know, but let me make use of that watch which we buried together under the old apple-tree? It is of no use to anyone and I shall be so grateful to you, brother!’ With what joy I should have consented. But to act secretly, treacherously, not to trust his friend…. No! No passion, no necessity would justify that!”

I repeat, I felt horribly injured. I began by a display of coldness and sulking….

But David was not one of the sort to notice this and be upset by it.

I began dropping hints.

But David appeared not to understand my hints in the least!

I said before him how base in my eyes was the man who having a friend and understanding all that was meant by that sacred sentiment “friendship,” was yet so devoid of generosity as to have recourse to deception; as though it were possible to conceal anything.

As I uttered these last words I laughed scornfully.

But David did not turn a hair. At last I asked him straight out: “What did he think, had our watch gone for some time after being buried in the earth or had it stopped at once?”

He answered me: “The devil only knows! What a thing to wonder about!”

I did not know what to think! David evidently had something on his mind … but not the abduction of the watch. An unexpected incident showed me his innocence.

XVI

One day I came home by a side lane which I usually avoided as the house in which my enemy Trankvillitatin lodged was in it; but on this occasion Fate itself led me that way. Passing the open window of an eating-house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, “a lazy fellow and a scamp,” as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine.

“And what do you suppose they’ve been up to?” said Vassily, whom I could not see but heard distinctly; he was, most likely, sitting close by, near the window with a companion over the steaming tea–and as often happens with people in a closed room, spoke in a loud voice without suspecting that anyone passing in the street could hear every word: “They buried it in the ground!”